# [D6:3M]
Vision: [[The Academy of Forbidden Thoughts]]
Hexagram: [[Sixth Hexagram]]
Trials: [[Sixth Trial]]
Symbols: #horse #waitingroom #blood #door #white #ghost #neédedEnemeA #moon #hood #TwoVersionsOfASelfsameLife #infancy #sun #car #wand #snowfall #darkwindow #game #mouth #eye
November 20th, 1969
I.
I demand audience
with Magister Ludi
of the Committee of
Forbidden Thoughts. Her horse
with she astride kicks me
in the teeth. I enter
into an ecstacy
in the waiting room. The
kick enraptures me, binds
me, bloodies my mouth. It
opens itself in me
like an expanding dream.
Through the door marked “Do Not”
they exit. “Reveal your
face.” I hear the command
from behind the closed door.
There is blood on the face
of my wristwatch. I am
enshrouded in white. Holes
for eyes and mouth. To see
and to smoke. To haunt, to
dream. What is the nature
of this dream expanding?
I watch the watchhands spin.
How kick ignites dream. To
feel and to know it like
the minutest heat of
dawn. Blood is not given to
theory: neither to hers,
that I was born guilty,
nor to mine, that I was
born a ghost. Ecstacy
of silent longing, the
vision of me that she
dost see is my vision’s
most neéded EnemeA.
II.
I find a pale moonlit
horse between two gravestones.
I mount it in the night.
It twists its neck to face
me, its hot breath soaking
my hair beneath the gleam.
I am ashamed. Beads rise
and drip down my face like
a hood of water. Horse
laughs at me and the dead.
I can’t remember how
I arrived to this place,
and, in fright, I begin
laughing too. Both Horse and
Dead divine me. I am
not free, not seen, only
invented and accused.
Who is this buried here?
I resolve to forbid
within myself frightful
thoughts, the weird and fleeting,
those categoriless
intimations. I will
be a force for goodness.
I feel my legs sinking
into horseribs. I do
not want to be alone.
Penetrating my shame
is Horse’s gaze. Now I
see the same name engraved
in both stones, two versions
of a selfsame life. One
dead in infancy, one
advanced in years. I cling
to horse even as we
merge. I will be good.
Soon, upon Horse, what is
forbidden inwardly
forbids what can’t be in
others outwardly. Wheat
from chaff will be my task.
To permit. To exclude.
If I must, I whisper,
be fastened to you, then
give authority to
my goodness. The good which
exiles the forbidden.
We advance to belong.
III.
Sunlight comes into my
car. In the dusty air
hover its wands that reach
through the window. They seem
to loosen the threads of
my bloodstained robe and hood.
Specks of dust float in the
light like dark snowfall. I
focus on minutest
of shapes within and try
to tug back. I think I
sense a response. I lick
my swollen lips, my horse-
kicked lips. My day-old blood
tastes of effacement. Gone
is my hope of being
permitted to matter in
the world. Yet almost
as soon as I think it
does it ring false, shallow.
Is it truly the world
that matters most to me,
or just this game? It is
morning, and it is strange
to have slept in the car.
Am I asleep or am
I awake? My face is
warmed by the morning sun.
I have felt ashamed all
my life. I drove around
last night and then returned
to the parking lot of
the Committee office.
This is what I do each
night, and each morning I
am again forbidden
by what I forbid. For
who is the Magister
of the game I play? Shame
is the name of the horse
she rides, the car I drive.
What is each but either?
_Who is the one in whose_
_parking lot the dark car_
_parks? And who behind its_
_dark windows waits? How still_
_is the night and how light_
_falls the snow? And how slow?_